Auto Da Fe
by Ostercy
Summary: Another day, another undead army on the rampage. Lara finds herself like a Spartan at Thermopylae in former Spanish North Africa.
1. Chapter 1

**Auto Da Fe**

I was lying on my sun lounger on the Costa De La Luz thinking about home.

Winston and I had got out of the car and looked up at the rebuilt Croft Mansion.

"Good as new, Ma'am," he said.

"Hmm," I said. "Where's the ivy? Where are all the bullet holes in the brickwork?"

"All brand new, Ma'am. They used modern materials but effectively it's exactly the same as the building started in Tudor times."

"It looks fake," I said. "A movie version of England."

"But .." said Winston, but I'd pulled on my jacket and started marching up to the front door.

Inside the main hall was perfectly symmetrical. The furniture was precisely replicated, the picture of my parents had been repainted to look like an old master. There was no sag in any of the steps of the main staircase, no rough bits in the paint, no loose banisters, no chips out of the mantlepiece. The whole place smelt of solvent.

I lit a cigar. The old Croft Mansion had smelt of smoke.

I vaulted up the stairs to my room. The four poster bed had been recreated, but the tassles were brand new instead of a slight mouse-eaten. The mattress was perfectly even and unsqueaky, not an uneven spring anywhere. The toilet in the bathroom may have been the same, but gone were the network of tiny crazing and cracks in the rim.

I examined the piano in the music room. It was perfectly in tune and all the ivories were perfectly white.

I found Winston in the perfect kitchen.

"I'm off," I announced. "This place has lost everything that made it home."

"I wish you'd give it a chance," he said.

"I will," I said. "But first I want you to let in some of the farm animals, burn some wood in a dust bin, and batter the outside of the house with a sledgehammer. Drive the car over the lawns, allow some unruly kids into the swimming pool, rip out the phones and replace that brand new piano with an out-of-tune one from a second hand shop."

"Madam! The refit cost a fortune."

"Look up 'organic growth' on Wikipedia, old chap," I said. "You can't just rip an old tree up by its roots and replace it with an almost identical new tree."

I got out one of my battered old Nortons that had survived the fire and headed for the airport.


	2. Chapter 2

I'd never been on a package tour before and to start with I was hugely amused.

The flight was marginally more comfortable than a flight hanging from the webbing of a Hercules, and despite the fact that I'm quite bendy, being shoved into a middle seat between two very fat men from Wimbledon with very strong B.O. tested my endurance skills to the limit. I quite enjoyed the in-flight meal – it kind of reminded me of British Army survival rations, but with cake - whilst the in-flight movie was something juvenile involving kids and magic and a lots of gurning British actors past their head set radio (£5, non-refundable) actually (rather to my delight) had Jonathan King's "Una Paloma Blanca" as one of the 12 tracks. Very family friendly.

I had a go at reading one of the four holiday books I'd picked up at the airport, a fascinating read called "Modern Combat Pistols".

"Did you know that they rate the penetration power of bullets by a measurement called 'AIT (goats at Strasbourg)'?" I said, holding the book up to the fat Wimbledonian to my right.

The Wimbledonian gave me a look.

"It refers to a famous European experiment where a great many goats of the approximate size and cardio-vascular capacity of a human being were shot broadside through the lungs with a variety of handguns."

He began to turn slightly greenish.

"You hear that screaming child four rows down?" I remarked. "Apparently the 185g jacketed hollow point .45 caliber Remington bullet has a measured penetration when fired into a block of standard ordinance gelatin of 17.1 inches. I bet I could fire through all the intervening passengers and seat-backs and still blow its little head off."

The Wimbledonian disappeared to the toilet and never came back.

At the airport an orange woman with a cylindrical canary yellow hat and a clipboard herded us all up.

"Don't you have any luggage, Madam?" she said.

"Sorry, no," I said. "Should I?"

"Of course not, Madam, but, you know; most holidaymakers bring a change of underwear, that sort of thing," she said, trying to be chummy.

"Who wears underwear?" I said, and she backed off, grinning uneasily.

I tried hard to eat the evening meal – paella - but had to retire early to my lovable cell plus balcony to drink the bottle of single malt I'd grabbed in duty free. The cell was non-smoking, and when I lit up a Montechristo on the balcony an elderly couple downwind started tutting and fake coughing.

I fared much better with the Full English Breakfast, the toast made with some strange slightly sweetish Spanish bread and slightly bitter baked beans. The greasy bacon no doubt mopped up the whiskey still coursing through my lard-hardened veins and soon, with the aid of a credit card and the hotel shops, I was down on the beach in a tasteless golden bikini one size too small.

Two of my other books were "_Deconstructing Disney_" by Madonna and "_One Hundred Reasons Why I Fucking Hate America_" by Noam Chomsky (or something like that). However my eye had been caught by a slim volume called "_Tomb Lovers_" whose blurb read "When archaeologist and eighty-fifth in line to the throne of England Lady Professor Mary Sue Fotherington-fforbes-Smythe meets a hunky globetrotting Indiana Jones-style adventurer, they are soon uncovering each others' hidden treasures."

I flipped forward to the sex bit with "_her heaving bosoms like the domes of Constantinople_" and "_his twitching member that subconsciously reminded her of the Obelisk of Hatshepsut_" but I couldn't concentrate.

"Oi!" I yelled at one of the teenage Lotharios lurking on the beach. "Can you get me a cheap bottle of _vino collapso_?"

"Anything for you, beautiful lady," he said.

I looked at his sixpack and bulging Speedos and suddenly changed my mind.

"On second thoughts, _follar te_. I've got literature to study."

Soon after that I nodded off and didn't awake until the sun went down.

So ended my first day as a package tourist.


	3. Chapter 3

Early-ish next morning wrecked clubbers on the beach would have been awoken by me swearing when I discovered the cost of a taxi to Cádiz. Still – I was a tourist. It was my duty to see a "sight".

The drive was almost good enough for me, as I like laying back and watching the sea and the countryside glide by whilst listening to tunes on my phone, in this case Rachid Taha.

"_u telgu el-bumbat ála-en-nas el-mujrimin lli nekrz klam es-solta_," I was singing as we sped into San Fernando. My Pigeon Arabic, such as it was, had improved marginally.

Leaning forward I said "Take me to La Caleta."

I stepped out of the taxi and walked straight down the beach into the sea, shedding clothes as I went. I tried imitating Halle Berry's entrance in _Die Another Day_, but I suspect she looked better. On the plus side I was born a day later than Bond Girl Jinx, and it was going to be me smoking the cigarillo and drinking the mojito on Caleta Beach, not Pierce Brosnan.

After a bit I got tired of people staring at me and walked out along the causeway to Castillo De San Sebastian. It was kind of boring, but the sun was shining, the breeze was cool and I like dry rock buildings.

Then I decided to find the cathedral.

"Cádiz Cathedral is a cathedral located in Cádiz, Spain," said Wikipedia, informatively. "It was built in 1722-1838."

Even allowing for several siestas, 116 years seemed quite a long time to spend building a cathedral. Mind you, I thought, they still haven't finished the _Sagrada Família_. I had a feeling that a cathedral completed in 1838 would be about as interesting as a 1960's block of flats, but it turned out I was mistaken, although not for architectural reasons.

There was a police car parked in the pedestrian plaza and inside the cathedral crypt was closed off with red, white and blue "_Policia Loca_l" tape; basically it was a crime scene.

I looked around for a policeman to bribe or charm – I had a hunch that whatever the story was, it would be interesting – but there was nobody in sight. The crypt was unlocked, so …

Cádiz Cathedral Crypt is kind of spooky for such a modern place. It has a low round roof, candles, some tombs and a weird echo. Spookier, though, was what looked like a hidden door made of yellow brick and behind it some clean-cut, unused stairs.

"I'm guessing that there's more down there than the fuse box and some spare pews," I said out loud, to calm my oddly rattled nerves.

I put 5 Euros in an offertory box and lit one of the larger candles to take with me, as there was no electric light switch to be seen. Maybe 1838 was too early for electricity and if there was gas lighting, well I couldn't see it.

Candle light makes anywhere creepy, but shielding the flame as I descended into the underground room, I was more disturbed by what I saw.

A large sarcophagus, its lid pushed aside, was surrounded by what looked like a pentagram drawn in some red powdery substance, the points delineated by half burned black candles. Nearby a noose was slung over a hook, and the police had outlined a mess on the floor that looked like something that had dribbled from a hanging man. There was a smell in the air, something like rotten eggs, and I began to feel slightly claustrophobic.

I decided to take some photos and then get out. The sarcophagus lid had no name but a crest – a weird drawing of a three turreted black tower engulfed in flames. Inside there was the remains of a gilt and wood coffin, nothing but splinters and fragments, as if the last hundred years or so had been particularly unkind.

I half ran up the stairs, my candle blowing out, and into the sunshine.

"Ridiculous," I said to myself. "You've been in more tombs than one can shake a stick at."

Needless to say I had to stop at a bright pavement table for an _oloroso_ and a _habano_, but despite the warmth I felt very cold. I stopped a small boy and bought a _Diario_, the local newspaper. I'm translating badly from memory, but on the "odd but true" page inside I found an item that read; "Well known _brujo_ takes his own life."

Apparently a local "warlock", Papa Cruz, had hanged himself in the crypt.

"Papa Cruz, 58, was famous for once being hired to put a curse on Cristiano Renaldo, the footballer. Soon after Renaldo was almost killed by a car accident in which he wrote off his Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano in a tunnel along the A538 near Manchester Airport, England." There were no details about what Papa Cruz had been up to, but the Bishop of Cádiz y Ceuta had condemned it as "a blasphemy and an outrage", and there were plans to cleanse and re-consecrate the cathedral immediately. As for the hidden room under the crypt and the tomb – there were nothing.

I searched Wikipedia – '_The see of Cádiz y Ceuta counted amongst its prelates in 1441 Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, an eminent Dominican theologian jurisconsult, who took a leading part in the Councils of Basle and Florence, and defended in his "Summe de Ecclesiâ" the direct power of the pope in temporal matters'_, _et cetera, et cetera_ – but felt none the wiser. I texted the photos to Lord Falsingham but I got no "message received"; I guessed I was on the wrong network, or something too boring to work out.

So I sipped my drink, my eye drawn to a bunch of _chirigotas_ entertaining the tourists with some witty song about something that I didn't quite catch. They were dressed as Norman knights, with long nose pieces and eye sockets blacked out with stage makeup. It was if a bunch of corpses were laughing at me.

I packed away my shudders and caught a taxi back to my nice normal package hotel.


	4. Chapter 4

Strange rumours began to surface in the resort, not on the local news, but by word of mouth. I don't know if Spain has the equivalent of a D Notice, but I suspected that an official silence had come into force.

"They say a dead man dug his way out of the sand and walked into the sea," said a tough looking Yorkshire woman, a half smile on her face as if she was telling a campside ghost story.

"Give over."

"The man's dog had at it and got stamped on. Dead. Snapped neck."

"Well, a dog'll go after a bone."

They laughed.

"What if it were true?"

"Man was probably on the ale."

And a teen couple down at a beach bar.

"He had an old uniform on, right? Like a war movie?"

"What like World War 2?"

"One of them. But the creepy thing was he got up?"

"Lush!"

"Walked into the sea?"

"Who-oo-o-o-oo!"

I began to develop an intense urge to see one of these alleged apparitions myself. Ghost stories can spread like group hypnosis, and any old tramp can look a bit like a corpse, so I wasn't convinced that people weren't just enjoying scaring each other.

I needed transport, and I wasn't keen on hiring a runabout from Hertz. I wanted something a bit more … off road, but what? I took a rather stuffy bus to Malaga and there, as promised by the internet, was an outlet for the Indian motorcycle firm Royal Enfield.

I settled on a Thunderbird, which - although it is little more than a big moped (346cc, top speed 80mph) - seemed like a good thing to manoeuvre about on crowded sand. Plus with its cherry red finish and gleaming chrome it looked sexy/retro, and totally appropriate for a bikini babe relaxing and catching some rays. I bought a cherry red open face helmet and some old school Raybans, a tough pair of jeans, a pre-battered chamois-looking jacket and some desert boots. I was good to go.

For the rest of the day I literally rode the beach from Malaga back to Costa De La Luz, keeping half an eye open for the local police. I saw nothing unusual, apart from two nude men having sex al fresco which I suspect broke some local bylaw. One had to admire their determination.

I stuffed myself with hotel "paella", had a litre of San Mig with lime slices and a Suntory shot and retired to bed early. I don't need my beauty sleep but then I'm no spring chicken.

I woke up with an idea. If the dead men weren't on the beach, maybe they were under the sea. Simples.

I zoomed down to Malaga and after a certain amount of faffing about involving not having the right paperwork and handing over a large wadge of off-the-books cash got myself a boat and some diving gear.

The Med looks blue, calm and clear but it's actually tricksy, muddy and moderately difficult to dive in, in my experience at least. Maybe I just pick the wrong dive sites.

I used as a point to mark the outer limit of my search the wreck of an old Spanish Navy submarine, the _C-3_, which lay about 5 miles off the coast in about 36 fathoms of water. The expensive hire boat had expensive sonar, one of those new-fangled 3D sidescan jobs, and using the precise coordinates I captured - at the limits of detection – a grainy image of the _C-3_ wreck, two fragments shrouded in what was possibly old fishing nets. From there I headed towards shore, eyes glued to the screen.

The software was one of those seabed characterisation packages used by fisherman and – dare I say it – marine archaeologists, and it produced a real-time multicoloured picture which got sharper the shallower we got.

Then I saw something very peculiar.

You can generally identify from the brightness and colour of a sonar picture what something is, and this wasn't a fish or a rock. It was round and it was moving at about walking pace, a plume of stirred up mud in its wake. I could see, or was I imagining it, protuberances appearing and disappearing to either side of the white blob. It moved steadily, eerily, across the seabed.

It was headed in a roughly south-south-easterly direction so I got the boat ahead of it and, already scuba'ed up, tipped myself into the water.

I got down to the seabed and waited. I'd like to say it was beautiful down there but it was dead-ish and the fish looked mangy.

Then I saw it in the distance, heading straight for me, a figure, striding steadily and stirring up a cloud.

I held my breath – not easy in scuba gear – as I saw it get larger, wiping the front of my mask in faint disbelief.

It was a soldier, or it looked like a soldier, in the uniform of what I later identified as that of the 4th Coast Artillery Regiment based near Cadiz, provenance any time during the reign of General Franco. I've seen dead men walking before but at the bottom of the sea, not quite rotted and in a modern uniform. Somehow that was worse.

I head my ground to see what it would, possibly not the most sensible course, but to tell the truth I was feeling a bit "rabbit in the headlights", frozen with half-amused horror.

I focussed on the "face", hair still attached to the skull, jaw gaping in an idiot drool, as the soldier powered towards me and then with a gentle bump simply swept me out of the way as it strode past.

The thing was walking about two to three miles an hour, a bit too fast for prolonged scuba speed and out of the range of most casual scuba divers, but then I'm good. With some big kicking I caught up with it and fastened my glove around a collar bone protruding through the material.

It was fun being pulled through the water albeit in a cloud of mud, but still our man didn't falter.

I worked my way down the vertebrae past the pelvic bone to a leg bone and held on to the shin bone - they were all connected very firmly, _so hear de word of de Lord_ - and scooped up a rock as we passed, trying not to be shaken loose. Working my way up again, I began to bash the corpse on the side of the head to see what would happen.

The hair came loose and I had a nasty moment when it was all over my face like a wind-blown toupee. It was as if I could smell the rot and slime and as if the hairs were going into my nose and mouth but of course they weren't

I smashed the side of the skull so that teeth and bone fragments started to fly out, one canine clunking against my face mask, but the walker didn't falter.

Suddenly I was getting worried that we were getting deeper – I could feel cold, cold water - but that wasn't what made me let go.

The fragments of corpse, including the man's hair - billowing along like some sort of zombie jellyfish - were catching up with us like a grotesque shoal. I pushed myself away in a haze of my own bubbles of shocked breath as the head reformed to its former shape and the dead soldier walked on, unswerving and unslowing.


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning the Royal Enfield and I were on the fast ferry from Malaga to Melilla, the latter being an autonomous Spain enclave of about five square miles on the coast of North Africa. With the aid of Google I'd deduced that if my walking solider continued in roughly a straight line he's hit the coast somewhere between Melilla and Ceuta (another Spanish enclave), and besides – I had a hunch based on no facts that the tomb in the cathedral and the bodies on the beaches had something in common, and I was getting a sort of "Christian Spanish" leitmotif.

The city of Melilla is famous for being the jumping off point for General Franco's bid for power – it's the only Spanish city that still proudly displays a statue of him – and in more recent times for a visit by the Spanish Royals which had almost provoked an uprising by the local African population. Some thousands of sub-Saharan migrants tried to climb over the apartheid wall surrounding the city. About 700 made it past the fences and the motion sensors while six died in clashes with local security forces.

I was mildly surprised as I disembarked not to find a bunch of undead fascists goose-stepping around the Plaza De Espana. I'd have bet good money that this was just the sort of place the Loony Dead went for their holidays.

It took me about half an hour to drive around the rest of Melilla, and then another half an hour and much brandishing of my British passport to be allowed out of the fortress into North Africa beyond.

"Next time the Spanish demand we give Gibraltar back, Senor," I said in my most cut glass accent, "I'm reminding them about this place." I drove off before I prolonged the argument.

I wondered for how long, after the Arabic dictatorships propped up by the West were overthrown, the Spanish enclaves would last. Half an hour?

Not that I gave a fuck. I got onto the N16 and headed west along the coast.

The mountains – I'm not entirely sure exactly which ones; the Rif? the Atlas? – come right down to the Mediterranean shore in these parts and it gives the impression of bandit country. I took the Royal Enfield as fast as I dared and took the switchbacks with exhilaration, avoiding the grubby lorries and bathing in the twinkling light from the ocean. The air smelt of dust and scorched coffee beans, and the dry air swept away the sybaritic lethargy of the Costas.

I wasn't sure what I was looking for, but the evidence seemed to suggest that there had been more skeletons than the one that had been bobbing along on the bottom of the beautiful briny sea. So … a cluster of calcified chrome domes?

At approximately "21.9 km NE of Imzoûrene, 26.0 km ExNE of Tirhanimîne" according to my GPS, I decided I needed a rest. In my twenties I could drink the night away and bounce out of bed to chop up tigers, but I was feeling old-ish.

I stopped at random in a collection of blue painted houses next to the sea. There was a single jetty with a couple of sardine boats, cliffs all around, a huge building site – deserted – up no the nearby hill and a tatty old square-towered mosque that looked as if it had been fashioned from concrete blocks.

I puttered around on the Enfield. There was a hand painted sign - "The Camping" - beyond which was an overgrown copse of spindly trees and a stand tap. Another sign said "Closed."

At a crossroads was a tiny shop, but a shop labelled with the universal symbol for a cool drink.

"You want gasoline Senorita?" shouted a loud voice, and a small kid bearing a plastic bottle full of greenish liquid shot out of the shadows.

"I want a Pepsi," I said, pointing up at the Pepsi sign. I was mildly surprised, given that Africa is a Coke continent, but the sign looked brand new so maybe there was a regime change in progress.

"Here you are, Mrs," said the kid, dashing out with a coolish bottle sporting a bendy straw.

"What's your name?"

The kid grinned. "Salaheddine," he said. "Salaheddine Sbai.**"**

"I don't believe you." He giggled.

It turned out that he was called Ahmal and the name of the place was Cala Idris. It had no hotel, unless you counted the enormous monstrosity being built on the hill. I had a feeling that Ahmal's days of offering petrol to lone travellers were numbered.

"What's that noise?" I said. Ahmal pointed up Cala Idris' only side street.

I peeked in through a heavily barred window. Inside was a small room decorated with paint hand prints and a ceiling of blue stars. Several little girls were sitting at tiny desks being led in song by a young woman with a blackboard and a Berber head dress. She didn't look as if she'd take any nonsense, so I crept away unseen.

I took one more turn around the village and came on a gate to the beach. "Private," said a notice in Arabic and English. "Property of Oceanic Holidays."

"Disgusting, isn't it?" said an American voice behind me. "They only got electricity in some buildings ten years ago."

I was confronted by what looked like a hippie that had been left out in the sun to dry. She had faded blonde hair and faded blonde eyes – no doubt she had been an absolutely stunning Haight-Ashbury chick twenty or thirty years ago – but now she looked a bit like a Joyce Grenfell satire on 1960's counter-culture.

"The list of things that Americans find disgusting in foreign countries is so long that you'll have to be more specific," I said, drily. I don't really like Americans.

"The beach," said the woman, apparently oblivious to my tone. "I'm Cleo, by the way. Cleo Odessa."

I gingerly shook her mummified hand, the back decorated with a scruffy henna design. "I'm Lara Croft," I said.

"I was just heading for lunch. Are you hungry?"

"There's a restaurant?"

Cleo laughed.

It turned out that Ahmal's parents had once tried to run a café when Cala Idris was a mecca for Cleo's old crowd back in the 70's. All that was left was a wooden table in the yard with a plastic flower in a bottle.

Ahmal's father produced an old menu with the John Player's Special logo at the top.

I read it gingerly.

_Fried Sardines Stuffed with Chermoula_

_Moroccan Baked Sardines_

_Moroccan Sardine Balls in Spicy Tomato Sauce_

_Sardines_

_Sardine __Bocadillo_

_Sardines Tagine_

_Seffa_

I wouldn't have been surprised to see "sardines, bacon, sausage and sardines."

"What's _seffa_?" I said.

"A dessert."

"It's not a savoury dessert with hints of fish in it, is it?"

It wasn't, so I ordered _seffa_ and a Café Americano. After three bowls of what appeared mostly to be chewy rice pudding I lit a cigar and snoozed with my eyes open whilst Cleo went on about global agribusiness and cultural imperialism, or some such thing.

"Have you got any drugs?" I said eventually to try and shut her up.

Cleo laughed. "Sorry, dude. Not any more. I had a bit of an episode a few years ago and now I have to look after my mental health."

We are interrupted by an invasion of screaming little girls who were in search of what looked like dusty Chupa Chups. Close after came the teacher that I'd spied on earlier who, on seeing that there were women present, came in for an espresso.

"This is Fatima al-Fihri," said Cleo. "She's descended from the original Fatima al-Fihri."

"Pleased to meet you," I said, noncommittally, since I had no idea what Cleo was talking about. "You're a teacher?"

"I teach the girls English," said Fatima, knocking back her espresso. "It will be useful when the resort is built."

Cleo was biting her tongue, but I could see that she wanted to say something about how dreadful it was that the old way of life was being destroyed by tourism. Fatima and I exchanged a glance. I sensed that she, in contrast to Cleo, thought that the sooner the tourist world arrived with all the extra money and all the benefits of modern living the better.

"Very prudent," I said.

"Will you talk to the class about England? Maybe tomorrow?"

"I'll come back this way," I promised.

As I drove out of Cala Idris I left Ahmal, Ahmal's father, Fatima and Cleo remonstrating with the local mechanic about the broken down school bus.


	6. Chapter 6

The first sentence of Poe's "House of Usher" reads "_du__ring the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher_."

Change "horseback" for "motorcycle" and "House of Usher" for "Peñón de Punta Quilate," and you wouldn't be far off.

I'd taken a red mud road through dusty dunes topped with withered vegetation down to a grey beach made of what looked like rocks and concrete dust and found myself looking at a bay surrounded by dark cliffs. In the centre was an island made of black rock with, clinging to its flanks, various off-white buildings. The peak at its centre had been dynamited to make a helicopter landing pad and a thin causeway of brown stone linked it to the mainland, a causeway scarred by an uneven break across which a retractable bridge had been built.

The wind whistled thinly and smelt of rotting fish, and a dreary rain began to fall. I rode up to the near end of the causeway where a barred gate under Spanish plaster arch painted in red and yellow stripes proclaimed "_Todo Por La Patria. Peñón__ de __Punta Quilate_."

I turned down onto the sad beach but there was nothing there but a few mouldering boats and a white concrete trapezium with a green arrow pointing to the cliffs and the legend "_Ancienne Mine Espeanole_". At the latter I perked up. A "mine" sounded like my sort of thing.

I rode the Enfield up the beach in a shower of stone chippings and found a cave like entrance burrowed into the rock.

I switched on the headlamps and drove slowly but enthusiastically into the tunnel, but after about 200 yards I was greeted by a rock fall. I hadn't been so disappointed by a tourist attraction since _Professor Worth's King Arthur Museum_.

I exited, my mind focused on finding a _pension_ and a _hookah_, but my sulky reverie was broken by a voice shouting down to me from the causeway. Wiping the rain from my eyes, I spied a man waving.

"Hello," I said, driving up to the now open gate. "Did you yell for me?"

"Buenos tardes," said a handsome Spanish officer. He was wearing the uniform of the Spanish Foreign Legion and he was – as our country cousins say – buff.

"I am Caballero Legionario Roderico González del Cueto of the Fifth Tercio Lieutenant Colonel Juan Yagüe," he said formally, saluting and clicking his heels. I almost giggled.

"I'm Lady Lara Croft of the Crofts of England," I said, extending my hand," but only snobs call me that, so you can call me Lara."

To my delight he kissed my fingers. "Enchanted, senorita," he said. "It would be pleasure to offer you a cup of coffee, if you would permit?"

There's nothing more entertaining to a girl than a stereotypical man.

He wheeled the motorcycle for me as if it weighed little more than a child's tricycle, and as I linked my arm in his, I was amused by his rock hard biceps.

"May I call you Roderico?" I enquired, politely.

A few minutes later we were sat in the mess, a rigorously spartan room decorated by an ancient Spanish flag centred with the silhouette of a bull and a large notice board covered with notices that had been aligned precisely with four identical and geometrically placed golden drawing pins each. Everything smelt vaguely of carbolic soap and I had a flashback to Wimbledon School. On one wall was a large photo of some _Legionario_s carried a giant crucifix in procession, pallbearers of Christ, a Christ with his face to the sky. At their head was Roderico, as grim faced as Sam Eagle Muppet.

"Once this was a Spanish fortress," Roderico was explaining, "Spanish sovereign territory like Melilla which you passed through. However a few years ago there was a riot and the Moroccan government intervened. Now we have a multinational NATO peacekeeping unit of 23 men."

"You're waiting for the UN to decide."

Roderico shrugged. "It is my honour to serve," he said, with a wry smile.

"And what nationalities do you have?" I said, with no interest in the answer but merely in examining his face.

"We have 6 Moroccans … it is part of an arrangement called 'Mediterranean Dialogue.' The rest are from NATO countries, America, Europe and so on. I am the only Spanish man remaining."

"But you're the commander?"

"Yes, I am." He drained his cup decisively, like a leader of men should. "May I take you on a tour of our facility?"

"Will you have to kill me afterwards?"

It was a pretty big place, a jigsaw, a combination of its various historical roles as pirate base, prison, fortress. The cliffs around were hard to scale and in the olden days they would have been overlooked by weaponry from various deserted gun emplacements, each with its own quaint saint's name painted neatly on a plaque – San Fernando Rey, Santa Marina, San Andrea Avellino, San Lazaro, etc. It was like a Spanish Galleon grounded and turned to stone.

Then – a place where Roderico wasn't keen to go.

"It's our cemetery," he said, somewhat stonily. "It is a private place."

"OK, caballero," I said. "I meant no disrespect."

His face crumpled somewhat as he heard himself. "I' am sorry. There was an incident a few nights ago. Vandalism."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"I can show you if you would like."

"Um … OK. But only if you are OK with it."

There was a small plot built between the cliff and the seawall, not dissimilar to an allotment. The gravestones were askew and the graves had been dug up.

I bent to read the inscription on the newest looking grave. The name was 'Madelena González del Cueto' and the date of death was a few months ago. There was an emblem – a crown crossed with a halberd, musket and crossbow. She'd been a solider, a _Dama Legionari_, and one of a very few.

"My sister," he said. "She was free climbing."

"They stole her?"

Roderico was expressionless. "We are still investigating. Maybe fundamentalists."

"I'm so sorry," I said. "How very horrible for you."

He nodded, his face set in a grim downturned smile. "She was afraid of being buried alive," he said, looking out to sea. "Ironic, no?"

I couldn't think of anything to say to that, so I just stood and shared the view.

I was invited to stay the night, but I needed to clear the death from my thoughts and so – although I accepted the offer of a hard bunk in the dormitory and a hot institution meal with alacrity – I decided to explore up the coast for another hour or two before it became dark.

Then, quite suddenly, just round a headland from Peñón de Punta Quilate, I came upon them. I skidded and fell from the bike in my surprise, and then, from a hiding place, I gazed down onto the isolated beach.


	7. Chapter 7

For my first approach I drove back and forth so that I was clearly visible on the horizon.

No reaction.

Then I tried driving around the edge of the gathering to the surf, ready at any minute to retreat, but none of them so much as looked at me.

"Oi!" I said, waving my arms from a safe distance. "I see dead people!"

I found myself wishing for some kind of weapon. I toyed with the concept of making myself a bow and arrow, but had a vision of me standing futilely before an approaching enemy with a "Twang!" and a "Boing!" as the arrow bounced off the target. I'd rather have a couple of Uzi 9mm's or some rocket propelled grenades. Archery is for the Olympics, Henry V, Victorian garden parties and men in tights.

In the end I parked the bike and tiptoed down to the sand to take a closer look.

The dead people – they had obviously once been soldiers – were standing to attention and facing to the East. They just weren't interested in me.

I approached one guy, half skeleton, half mummy, dressed in a British WW2 uniform, obviously once part of General Montgomery's North Africa campaign.

"Good afternoon," I said.

The thing didn't move or acknowledge my presence. I poked it a few times on the arm. I punched it. The corpse merely swayed a little. I picked up a big stick and, with a yell, smashed the soldier in the face.

The head flew off in a cloud of skin and, after rebounding off some nearby skeletons like a ball in a pinball machine, thumped into the sand. Then after a few seconds it took to the air like a monstrous bumble-bee and replaced itself.

It seemed that the army, like my underwater friend, was depressingly indestructible. I'd faced armies before – even King Arthur's – but they'd all been susceptible to a rain of bullets. I realised I'd have to discover what this motley crew wanted before they went all _Bedknobs and Broomsticks_.

My eye was caught by a dead person that wasn't like the rest. Four corpsmen were carrying what looked like the flatbed ripped from a flatbed truck, and rammed into its wooden surface was the back seat from an old Caddy. I tiptoed through the ranks and then, as I was further ignored, strode. Seated on the sedan chair was a grizzly figure clothed in the decaying robes of a Dominican friar, his tonsured skull pointlessly shielded from the elements by a Peroni umbrella.

As I was staring … he turned towards me. I jumped.

I saw his skeletal jaw moving, and then skeletal fingers reaching up to discover why there was no voice. The fingers explored the place where a throat should be, and poked at non-existent lips and tongue. His vision of himself was as of someone alive but reality was letting him down.

The Dominican stretched his neck as if to free knotted muscles and drummed the fingers of one hand on the leather of his throne. He indicated that he had "temporarily" lost his voice and beckoned to me.

I up pulled myself up onto the flatbed and threw in a hand stand just for the hell of it. I was startled by a sound and realised that it was the clack of teeth - the Dominican was amused it seemed.

"Brother," I said cautiously with a faint bow.

The Dominican held out a skeletal hand for me to kiss and I would have demurred but for the interesting ring on his finger. As I stooped and pressed my lips upon it I saw a plain bronze ring topped with an oval disk and inscribed in intaglio a design I'd encountered before, a three turreted tower in flames.

"You came from Cadiz Cathedral."

The Dominican bowed.

"And what bring you and your men here?"

The Dominican produced a crude wooden crucifix from beneath his rotten cotta and gestured a blessing over the world.

"Great."

I started smiling and backing away, but my retreat was interrupted by a loud ding from my pocket - I had a message on my mobile. A thousand skulls swivelled on a thousand neck vertebrae.

I froze. "Excuse me," I said, after a moment, making my movements as unthreatening as possible, each followed by a sea of eye sockets.

The text was from Falsingham;

"PHOTOGRAPHS RECEIVED STOP CREST THAT OF TOMAS DE TORQUEMADA STOP BEST NOT APPROACH STOP CRYPT SITE BRUJO RESURRECTION SPELL STOP ON WAY GIB CURANDERO STOP END"

It appeared that he hadn't moved on from telegrams.

The Dominican was gesturing at me, a kind of creepy claw-like gesture that I translated as "What is that? Give it to me."

In response I did a backwards somersault onto the sand. Suddenly I was deafened, for the whole army was doing that jaw clacking thing that passed for laughter amongst the throatless dead. I amused them, it seemed. I should have been relieved but instead felt vaguely patronising.

I ran, but they didn't pursue me and made it back to my cycle hidden above the beach.

That night I dozed over the handle bars. I had creepy dreams that may have been real; I couldn't tell. I must have been twisting and turning on my uncomfortable perch for the dawn found me with bruised thighs.

As the sun emerged dripping from the watery hills, there was the beat of bone on bone and then the clattering of ribs. If they'd had lips there would have been the blare of horns and the bray of trumpets. The army had begun to march as one corpse, and their direction was towards the Peñón de Punta Quilate.


	8. Chapter 8

I beat the army by ... I'm not sure? Half an hour? They weren't exactly in a hurry ... and parked the Enfield at the landward end of the causeway. The weather had improved, a clear sun in a paper sky, but the Peñón de Punta Quilate still glowered like a Gothic headache, its rocky talons embedded in the surface of the sea.

I climbed and vaulted over the closed gate, shouting for Roderico. At any real military installation I'd have been shot for such behaviour, no doubt.

"Lara!" he said. He had that tousled just out of bed look. "What is it?" His manner suggested a mixture of annoyance and concern.

"There's a mob on the way," I said, "and I think they mean mischief."

I explained about my little trip up the coast but I couldn't bring myself to say "and they were all dead, mate" at the end of the story.

"Moroccans?"

"Mostly Spanish I think. A few Brits."

"Have they been drinking?" His face had gone from "concerned", to "this stupid girl has allowed herself to be frightened by some football hooligans."

"Roderico! Trust me! You need to batten down the hatches and get the guns out."

"But we are impregnable," he half protested, but he started to stride rapidly towards the barracks with me. "That is the whole point ..." Maybe he thought better safe than sorry, or maybe he thought good excuse for a drill, but whatever he thought he raised the alarm.

They had a good deal of Heckler and Koch light arms, some Instalaza grenades and anti-tank missiles and a number of Vickers coastal artillery pieces with quite a lot of shells. The cavalry consisted of an ancient MBB Bo 105 helicopter that had, in fact, been sold to Uruguay - who had then failed to bother to collect it - and a battered six-wheeled infantry vehicle up on blocks.

The cavernous armoury was piled high with blasting explosives, used once perhaps in the mines I'd seen on the beach or to maintain the chasm between the fort and the land crossed by the causeway. I rummaged about and found some Browning Hi-Power pistols - "I have no idea where they came from," said Roderico - and a slightly bizarre sniper rifle named the Accuracy Enforcement or AE/AE MkII, all weapons capable of taking standard NATO ammunition (of which there was lots).

If I was a better writer I'd probably have spent less time describing the guns and more time describing the men that I fought alongside. There were thirty of them and they were a mixed bunch. What can I say about them to make them seem more loveable and human, so that you will feel sorry when I tell you of their deaths? Not much. They were just ordinary blokes from a range of backgrounds. There didn't seem to be one 'charming rogue' or 'cheeky chappy' or 'psycho in uniform' among them to enliven my tale. Forgotten men guarding a forgotten fort for forgotten reasons.

The first casualty of the action was a fleshy man - I didn't get his name - who took one look at the dead and dropped from a fatal heart attack. I guess he preferred his walking corpses on a TV screen over a bag of Doritos.

They came along the road and out of the sea, and the first thing that they did was to start building something on the beach out of driftwood.

I peered at it through my sniper's range.

"Looks like football posts," I remarked.

I tested out the AE, blowing the cranium off one of the workdead, but it reassembled like an explosion in reverse and carried on regardless.

When they finished building whatever they were building, they attacked. I say attacked, they approached. Soon they were crawling up the rocks from the sea and the beach like spiders that had never seen the sun.

We all let fly - it was like shooting ducks in a barrel - but as I already knew it was pointless.

"Command and control," I thought, as no doubt you would have thought, and commandeered one of the howitzers. I could see that drab monk perched high on his seat, thoughtfully surveying the action, so I let him have it with a Vickers 885kg artillery shell. We were elated by the large crater in the beach that resulted but less elated when a few minutes later he was back on yet another makeshift throne.

Eventually they attained the walls of course by sheer force of numbers, but to our surprise they didn't fight back. In the moments before each was blown to smithereens they seemed to be searching, examining each man individually.

Then they found someone they liked.

It was a bit of a shock when, having not laid a bony finger on any of us, they tried to drag one of us away.

"Mantener," ordered Roderico, which made us feel like ancient heroes, but it didn't stop Alférez being dragged off the fortress, however much red hot metal we poured into his abductors. It would be unfair to relate how he begged for our help and we begged for his forgiveness.

Then - a turn in the tide and the fortress was about to fall.

I was watching the beach and keeping my own counsel. I had spotted what my fellow combatants had not.

"Tell me about Alférez," I said.

He was a Muslim from Andalusia, that rarest of things.

"And the religion of the other two guys we've had to barricade in the armoury?"

Roderico's face began to dawn. "Another Muslim, and Chelma is a Jew."

I looked again at the construction on the beach. It seemed as if the army were stringing a struggling Alférez up by the neck until he was dead. I decided to keep the information to myself.

We were making a last stand around the armoury with the army swarming on us so fast that they were disintegrating and being replaced like waves on a beach, when Roderico stopped dead. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried murmur, as if unconscious of my presence.

"Madelena," he whispered. "She has risen from her tomb and stands before us."

The crowd of skeletons let him pass.

There, bathed in aquamarine sea glitter, was the ghastly figure of the Dama Legionari Madelena González del Cueto. There was blood upon her uniform, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her beautiful frame. For a moment she remained upon the parapit – and then, with a low, moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother.

Roderico pulled her with him, falling to the floor and then rising again. As they staggered to and fro I could see him pulling the pin from a grenade. He meant to throw his sister from the crag but she was stronger, and like two drunk lovers they fell through the half open door of the armoury.

"Fire in the hold …!" I began to yell, running for cover, but an explosion blew me off my feet and I fell the sixty feet into the ocean.

There came a fierce breath of the whirlwind and my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder—there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters—and the deep and dank sea closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the Peñón de Punta Quilate.


End file.
